Toward the simulation of the strain of female pelvic organs.

Surgical simulators have undergone a significant development, especially since the rise of mini-invasive surgery. The main simulators of digestive surgery have been developed for solid organs such as the liver and spleen. Studies relating to soft tissues like the pelvic organs are rare. The aim of this work was to create a model of female pelvis that will be used as a basis for the development of a patient specific pelvic simulator. A dynamic MRI acquisition is used to evaluate and to set the simulation model.

Depth-map-based scene analysis for active navigation in virtual angioscopy.

This paper presents a new approach dealing with virtual exploratory navigation inside vascular structures. It is based on the notion of active vision in which only visual perception drives the motion of the virtual angioscope. The proposed fly-through approach does not require a premodeling of the volume dataset or an interactive control of the virtual sensor during the fly-through. Active navigation combines the on-line computation of the scene view and its analysis, to automatically define the three-dimensional sensor path. The navigation environment and the camera-like model are first sketched. The basic stages of the active navigation framework are then described: the virtual image computation (based on ray casting), the scene analysis process (using depth map), the navigation strategy, and the virtual path estimation. Experimental results obtained from phantom model and patient computed tomography data are finally reported.